New Jersey Keeps Enforcing Its Rifle and Magazine Bans and Asks the Supreme Court to Park Its Appeal Behind Viramontes

Estimated reading time: 5 minutes

WASHINGTON, DC — New Jersey took its rifle and magazine bans to the Supreme Court on October 1, 2026, and the filing is not the one most people expected. The petition in Davenport v. Association of New Jersey Rifle and Pistol Clubs does not ask the justices to hear the state’s appeal and reverse the Third Circuit. It asks them to park the case until the Court rules in Viramontes v. Cook County and Grant v. Higgins, then erase the Third Circuit’s judgment and send it back down.

In July I covered New Jersey’s motion asking the Third Circuit to hold its mandate, the paperwork that puts a ruling into effect. The petition answers the question that article left open. The Third Circuit granted the stay on August 4, 2026, and the petition states plainly that “the LCM and Assault Weapons provisions remain in effect.” The stay lasts until the Supreme Court is finished with the case.

Attorney General Jennifer Davenport, with Solicitor General Sundeep Iyer as counsel of record, frames two questions: whether the Second and Fourteenth Amendments prohibit restrictions on “semi-automatic assault rifles” and on “large capacity magazines.” The state wrote those questions in its own vocabulary. What it actually wants is in the petition’s first paragraph: hold the case “pending its decision in Viramontes and Grant,” then, “if appropriate,” “grant the petition, vacate the judgment of the Third Circuit, and remand the case for further consideration.” Lawyers call that a GVR. The Court never rules on the merits; it wipes out the lower court’s decision and tells that court to try again under the new precedent.

The petition notes the Court is already holding NAGR v. Lamont, Duncan v. Bonta, and Gator’s Custom Guns v. Washington the same way, and calls the questions in NAGR “indistinguishable” from its own. The Court took Viramontes and Grant on June 30, 2026, on one question: whether the Second and Fourteenth Amendments guarantee the right to possess AR-15 platform and similar semiautomatic rifles. New Jersey leans on Judge Montgomery-Reeves’s concurrence below, which called the Cook County and Connecticut laws “nearly identical” to New Jersey’s.

Why a hold rather than a straight denial? The state says denying the petition now “would lead to a ‘flood of currently restricted weapons entering’ the State that are ‘near-impossible to retrieve once within the state,’” borrowing the Second Circuit’s words. On magazines, it does not claim the Third Circuit got the question wrong on its own terms. It argues the Viramontes answer “is also likely to clarify the standard applicable to challenges to LCM restrictions,” so whatever the Court says about rifles should reopen the magazine ruling too.

The ruling New Jersey wants erased came from the full Third Circuit on a 10-5 vote on July 17, 2026, with Judge Arianna Freeman writing. The court held that semiautomatic rifles and magazines over ten rounds are arms in common use for lawful purposes, and that a government cannot ban a class of arms in common use. It pointed to roughly 24 million AR-15s and similar rifles in circulation and more than 100 million 30-round AR-15 magazines, and borrowed the D.C. Circuit’s line that whatever capacity falls outside common use, “that capacity surely is not ten.” It called the rifle law a de facto ban, since no member of the public has ever received the license the statute technically allows. New Jersey’s complaint: “Despite changes in the technology and the rise of modern mass shootings, the Court disagreed with the State that this case involved an ‘unprecedented societal concern’ necessitating a more ‘nuanced approach,’ or that such an approach would change the outcome.”

The Third Circuit knew it stood alone. The majority acknowledged that the First, Second, Fourth, Seventh, Ninth and D.C. Circuits have upheld similar laws, including the Ninth Circuit’s Duncan v. Bonta on California’s ten-round limit. Judge Krause’s dissent called the Third Circuit “the only Court of Appeals in the Nation to afford constitutional protection to AR-15s and LCMs.” That disagreement is a circuit split, the main reason the Supreme Court takes cases, and New Jersey treats it as already headed for resolution in Viramontes.

The amicus briefs, filed by outside groups with a stake in the answer, are already in on that case. On September 4, Gun Owners of America and Gun Owners Foundation filed with Century Arms, Canik USA, B&T USA and Fostech, arguing the government cannot ban commonly owned firearms because politicians or judges consider them too dangerous or “military-style.” The NRA announced its own brief the next day. Manufacturers signing onto a Cook County case tells you who else understands that Viramontes will decide New Jersey.

More from USA Carry:

• A Federal Court Threw Out New Jersey’s Rifle and Magazine Bans. The State Is Asking to Keep Enforcing Them Anyway – USA Carry
• Third Circuit Strikes Down New Jersey’s Semiautomatic Rifle and 10-Round Magazine Bans as Unconstitutional
• Licensed to Carry in Ten States, Denied a Gun ID Card in New Jersey Over Online Posts: SAF Asks State Supreme Court to Step In
• Appeals Courts Now Split on 10-Round Magazine Bans, and California’s Is the Case Asking the Supreme Court to Step In
• Supreme Court Takes Up the Case That Could Strike Down Assault Weapon Bans Nationwide

For anyone living under New Jersey’s gun laws, nothing has changed on the ground. The ten-round limit stays. Knowing possession of an operable listed rifle remains a crime carrying up to ten years and a $150,000 fine. The state lost in front of fifteen judges, got that same court to let it keep enforcing the laws, and is now asking nine justices to leave its case untouched until they rule on somebody else’s. The mindset is simple: do not treat the Third Circuit’s ruling as the law of your state until the paperwork says it is.

I will continue tracking Davenport v. ANJRPC alongside Viramontes and Grant, and I will report on the gun owners’ response when it is filed.

Read the original story: New Jersey Keeps Enforcing Its Rifle and Magazine Bans and Asks the Supreme Court to Park Its Appeal Behind Viramontes